Small team but multiple projects
Hi,
I used to be a full time scrum master for a larger development team and used to work using traditional scrum by the book, so to speak. In a new job now and I have a team of 3, I’m a team leader and not a scrum master but used scrum for a large project And we had with success. The thing is, having big large projects one at a time are a luxury .... my boss has said it was a one off and the normal thing will be multiple projects (2 or 3) at the same time (and likely different people working on different projects as they will be for different customers) ... with a team or 3. I’ve challenged but it is the way it is so I need to figure out how best to handle this work with multiple projects. So it feels like I’ll have 2 developer working on customer project A, the. Developer 2 and 3 maybe working on project B together, for example.
I can’t use scrum as the team is too small with 2 or 3 projects on the go, my boss suggested having one big backlog and then not think about what customer it’s for ... but rather just have the work there and have the team inspect the work and decide who’s best to help.
how would you suggest I best handle this kind of workload moving forward? Maybe Kanban? I need help on this one.
Let's not mention projects. You have a customer so I am assuming you have a service or a product. How many products are these micro-teams, or pods, responsible for?
I was on a high-performing Scrum Team with 3.5 people and we did one to two releases per week on one week Sprints. That is where my opinion of medium to large Scrum Teams changed. I am a firm believer in small and lean teams. So Scrum can be applied on any size teams.
It doesn't sound like there is an appetite for significant organizational change. Would you say people demonstrate the values of commitment, focus, respect, openness, and courage? That's the starting point.
Thanks for the replies. To answer some of the questions.
we are a software house and have various customers all over the world. We offer software consultancy. Sometimes the work coming in is 5 days of development or a few bug fixes. Maybe it’s a new text box on a page. Sometimes it’s support to help a customer install something and then other times it’s really large project work from 50-100 days to build a complex application. So the work varies all of the time and I’m struggling to see how I manage this best?
can this still fit into scrum? It feels a bit chaotic as there can sometimes be multiple customers wanting things at the same time and with such a small team I feel forced to silo them away on specific customer work, but then I lose the value of people working together
You might want seriously questoin what benefits you think Scrum can provide. The Scrum Guide provides this definition of Scrum:
Scrum (n): A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.
Does that fit the defintion of the work that your team will be doing?
And I'm going to add that I have rarely seen where a single team can be successful with Scrum without the entire organization supporting it. Scrum is more than sprints, backlogs and user stories. It requires organizations to understand, accept and support the benefits of the entire framework. For example, not once did you mention anything about a Product Manager and given the nature of the work you described it doesn't seem like that role exists in your organization.
You may not be successful using Scrum "by the book" but you could probably use some of the practices/techniques you have used in the past to help improve the team's ability to deliver value.